List of Attacks

Wife-Beating

Does Islam allow a man to hit his wife?

Yes, but only if she doesn't do as he asks. The beating must stop if
the woman complies with her husband's demands. Behind verbal abuse and
abandonment, beating is intended as last resort solution to coerce submission.

According her testimony in the Hadith, Muhammad physically struck his favorite wife
for leaving the house without his permission. It is not known how he treated his less-favored wives.

Quran

Quran (4:34)
- "Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to
excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are
therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those
on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the
sleeping-places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way
against them; surely Allah is High, Great." Contemporary
translations sometimes water down the word 'beat', but it is the same one used
in verse
8:12 and clearly means 'to strike'.

Quran (38:44)
- "And take in your hand a green branch and beat her with it, and do not
break your oath..." Allah telling Job to beat his wife (Tafsir).

Hadith and Sira

Sahih Bukhari (72:715) - A woman came to Muhammad and begged him to stop her
husband from beating her. Her skin was bruised so badly that it is
described as being "greener" than the green veil she was wearing. Muhammad
did not admonish her husband, but instead ordered her to return to him
and submit to his sexual desires.

Sahih Bukhari (72:715) - "Aisha said, 'I have not seen any woman suffering as
much as the believing women'" Muhammad's own wife
complained Muslim women were abused worse than other women.

Sahih Muslim (4:2127) - Muhammad struck his favorite wife, Aisha, in the chest one
evening when she left the house without his permission. Aisha narrates,
"He struck me on the chest which caused me pain."

Sahih Muslim (9:3506) - Muhammad's fathers-in-law (Abu Bakr and Umar) amused him
by slapping his wives (Aisha and Hafsa) for annoying him.
According to the Hadith, the prophet of Islam laughed upon hearing this.

Abu Dawud (2141) - "Iyas bin ‘Abd Allah bin Abi Dhubab reported the
Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) as saying: Do not beat Allah’s
handmaidens, but when ‘Umar came to the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon
him) and said: Women have become emboldened towards their husbands, he (the
Prophet) gave permission to beat them." (This is graded sahih - authentic)
At first, Muhammad forbade men from beating their
wives. As the hadith indicates, he rescinded this once it was reported that women were becoming
emboldened toward their husbands. Beatings in a Muslim marriage were deemed necessary at times to keep the woman in her place.

Abu Dawud (2142) - "The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: A man will not
be asked as to why he beat his wife." The authenticity of this chain of narration is
characterized as daif (weak), however, a similar verse from Sunan Ibn Majah 3:9:1986
is said to be hasan (sufficient).

Abu Dawud (2126) -
"A man from the Ansar called Basrah said: 'I married a virgin woman in her veil.
When I entered upon her, I found her pregnant. (I mentioned this to the
Prophet).' The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: 'She will get the dower, for
you made her vagina lawful for you. The child will be your slave. When she has
begotten (a child), flog her'" A Muslim man thinks he is getting a
virgin for a wife, then finds out that she is pregnant. Muhammad tells him to treat the
woman as a sex slave and then flog her after she delivers the child. (Despite multiple
chains of narration, this hadith is graded as daif).

Ibn Ishaq/Hisham 969 - Requires that a married woman be
"put in a separate room and beaten lightly" if she "act in a sexual
manner toward others." According to the Hadith, this can be for an
offense as petty as merely being alone with a man to whom she is not related.

Notes

Contemporary apologists often squirm over this relatively
straightforward verse from the Quran (4:34) - which gives men the
right to beat their wives if they have even a "fear" of disloyalty or
disobedience. Their rhetorical aerobics
inspired us to write a separate article:

Others are not nearly as squeamish. Sheikh Yousef
al-Qaradhawi, one of the most respected Muslim clerics in the world, once made
the famous (and somewhat ridiculous statement) that "It is forbidden to beat
the woman, unless it is necessary." He went on to say that
"one may beat only to safeguard Islamic behavior," leaving no doubt that
wife-beating is a matter of religious sanction. (source)

Dr. Muzammil Saddiqi, the former president of ISNA (the
Islamic Society of North America), a mainstream Muslim organization, says it is important that a wife "recognizes the authority of her husband in the
house" and that he may use physical force if he is "sure it would improve
the situation." (source)

Sheikh Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the head of Al-Azhar,
Sunni Islam's most prestigious institution says that "light beatings" and
"punching" are part of a program to "reform the wife" (source).

CAIR's
Dr. Jamal Badawi endorses corporal punishment as
"another measure that may save the marriage" (source).
He doesn't make clear how striking a woman will make her more inclined to
staying with her assailant, unless Badawi is implying that teh beating instills a fear of more serious
consequences should if she attempt to leave.

Egyptian cleric, Abd al-Rahman Mansour, said in a 2012
televised broadcast that, in addition to discouraging the wife from filing
divorce, beatings would inspire the wife to "treat him with kindness and
respect, and know that her husband has a higher status than her." (source)

During Ramadan of 2010, another cleric named Sa'd Arafat
actually said the woman is "honored" by the beating (source).
No one else seemed terribly surprised or upset by this.

An undercover report from progressive Sweden in 2012 visited 10 mosques and found
that 6 actually advised beaten women not to report the abuse
to the police. These women were also told that they must submit to
non-consensual 'sex' with their husbands. (source)

In the birthplace of Islam, about half of Saudi women are
beaten at home. "Hands and sticks were found to be used mostly in
beating women, following by men’s head cover and to a lesser extent, sharp
objects." (source)

In 2016, the Council of Islamic Ideology proposed a bill - ironically named the
Protection of Women against Violence Act - that actually included
exceptions for "lightly beating" defiant wives. (source)

According to Islamic law, a husband may strike his wife for
any one of the following four reasons:

- She does not attempt to make herself beautiful for him
(ie. "let's herself go")
- She refuses to meet his sexual demands
- She leaves the house without his permission or for a
"legitimate reason"
- She neglects her religious duties

Any of these are also sufficient grounds for divorce.

Respected Quran scholars in the past interpreted verse
4:34 with impressive candor. Tabari said that it means to "admonish
them, but if they refused to repent, then tie them up in their homes and beat
them until they obey Allah’s commands toward you." Qurtubi told
wife-beaters to avoid breaking bones, if possible, but added that "it is not a
crime if it leads to death." (source)

Muslim apologists sometimes say that Muhammad
ordered that women not be harmed, but they are actually basing this on what he
said before or during a battle, such as in
Bukhari (59:447) when Muhammad issued an order for all the men of Qurayza be killed
and the women and children taken as slaves. (Having your husband
murdered and being forced into sexual slavery apparently doesn't qualify as
"harm" under the Islamic model).

But, in fact, there are a number of cases in which Muhammad
did have women killed in the most brutal fashion. One was Asma bint
Marwan, a mother or five, who wrote a poem criticizing the Medinans for
accepting Muhammad after he had ordered the murder of an elderly man. In
this case, the prophet's assassins literally pulled a nursing infant from her
breast and stabbed her to death.

After taking Mecca in 630, Muhammad also ordered the murder
of a slave girl who had merely made up songs mocking him. The Hadith are
rife with accounts of women planted in the ground on Muhammad's command
and pelted to death with stones for sexual immorality - yet the prophet of Islam
actually encouraged his own men to rape women captured in battle (Abu Dawood
2150, Muslim
3433) and did not punish them for killing non-Muslim women (as Khalid ibn Walid
did on several occasions - see Ibn Ishaq 838 and 856).

In summary, according to the Qur'an, Hadith and Islamic
law, a
woman may indeed have physical harm done to her if the circumstances warrant,
with one such allowance being in the case of disobedience. This certainly
does not mean that all Muslim men beat their wives, only that
Islam permits them to do so.